Friday, May 13, 2011

Old Age or Lack of Caffeine

I might as well be honest right from the beginning, I don’t drink caffeine so that pretty much narrows it down, doesn’t it.

Drive-through coffee is just an accepted fact of life in Seattle and most of us have at least one within a mile of our home or workplace.I have three: A Starbucks, MacDonald’s, and one where the barista works in her underwear.We are spoiled for choice and quality around here so most of us have fine-tuned our coffee to suit our needs and desires perfectly.We can be almost ridiculously picky about our drinks and so, we usually are.The customers who request a ‘tall brewed’ are few and far between.

Up until about 6 months ago I was drinking a ‘decaf grande two Splenda breve latte’.Then I changed my regular drink and I swear, it took me at least two months to run through ‘iced decaf triple grande two Splenda latte’ without breaking into a “breve” somewhere.But eventually your mind blocks out the rhythm of the old drink and the new one flows from your mouth to the mic at the drive-through with practically no thought.

Now here is where it gets difficult. In my ongoing efforts to reduce carbs anywhere I can, I have decided to cut back on my lattes and replace them some of the time with ‘iced passion tea lemonade no syrup two Splenda’.So now my poor ancient brain has to toggle between the two drinks.It is embarrassingly difficult.

I know I sound like the rich man complaining about how hard it is to handle all his money.But I also know this would not be such a problem if I were thirty.Thank God I am such a regular that the lovely young people at my local Starbucks know me and help me out when I get in the middle of a hopelessly botched order.I am sure they do it for all the ‘old folks’, it’s probably part of Starbucks training.